May 13, 2013 — John Hinderaker

IRS Scandal About to Blow Wide Open?

Featured image To no one’s surprise, it is already evident that the Obama administration has been lying about the scope of the IRS’s harassment of conservative-leaning non-profits. The »
May 13, 2013 — John Hinderaker

Who Cares About Unemployment When We’ve Got Gay Marriage?

Featured imageToday the Minnesota Senate passed a bill authorizing gay marriage which will be signed into law by our governor, Mark Dayton. That is the context for this text, which my oldest daughter sent me a few minutes ago: If I had a dollar for every #time4marriage hashtag on my feed I’d be rich. Someone should start a #time4jobs trend, seeing as there are approx. twice as many unemployed Americans as »
May 13, 2013 — Steven Hayward

L’Affaire Richwine

Featured imageI didn’t know Jason Richwine very well during his post-doc fellowship at AEI, but in my rare interactions I was favorably impressed.  But as background to pondering his shameful dismissal from Heritage last week, I want to recall the time in the late 1980s when I first met James Q. Wilson, arguably America’s greatest social scientist at the time, shortly after he left Harvard for UCLA.  In the course of »
May 13, 2013 — John Hinderaker

Obama Bobs and Weaves on Benghazi

Featured imagePresident Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron held a brief joint press conference this morning. After the introductory comments, the first questions related to Benghazi and the IRS. Here is some of what Obama had to say about Benghazi: With respect to Benghazi, we’ve now seen this argument that’s been made by some folks primarily up on Capitol Hill for months now. And I’ve just got to say — here’s »
May 13, 2013 — Scott Johnson

Innervisions

Featured imageWhen Ronnie White (of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles) brought Steveland Morris over to the Motown offices in Detroit in 1961, Berry Gordy was at first unimpressed. After Morris sang the Miracles’ “Lonely Guy” and performed on piano, harmonica and bongo, Gordy signed the 11-year-old boy to his label. According to Nelson George’s Where Did Our Love Go?, “Berry, in one of his more inspired name changes, decided [Morris] would »
May 13, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff

Lessons from the IRS scandal

Featured imagePresident Obama tried today to catch up with the IRS scandal, condemning the IRS officials who targeted conservatives. Obama clearly perceives the threat this scandal poses to trust in government, and hence to his project of vast expansion of governmental power. It’s possible too that he feels genuine outrage about the IRS’s targeting of conservatives. But neither presidential outrage nor condemnation can mitigate the central concern that this scandal reinforces »
May 13, 2013 — Scott Johnson

Accountability, Clinton style

Featured imageIt’s difficult to find humor in anything related to the murder of our ambassador to Libya and his colleagues in Benghazi, but the Accountability Review Board convened by Hillary Clinton has seeds of of comedy in it. As scandal management, the Accountability Review Board (report here) amounted to something like performance art. Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing represented two of the three whistleblower witnesses who testified before the House committee »
May 13, 2013 — John Hinderaker

The Times Gives Obama Cover on the IRS Scandal

Featured imageThe New York Times initially covered the IRS scandal on page A11 of the Saturday paper. Having thought over the best line to take, the paper’s editors came up with this: Sure, it’s all about politics! Deeper in the article, the Times explains further: Since last year’s elections, Republicans in Congress have struggled for traction on their legislative efforts, torn between conservatives who drove the agenda after their 2010 landslide »
May 13, 2013 — Scott Johnson

Obama celebrates Mother’s Day

Featured imageThe White House has set up a Twitter account through which it is praising our Dear Leader in a style befitting the megalomaniacal leader of a one-party state. You really have to see it to get a fuller understanding of the Age of Obama, though I should warn readers that, as in the case of New York Times editorials, you may lose brain cells scrolling through the thing. In one »
May 12, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff

Romance returns to the FA Cup

Featured imageEngland’s FA Cup — the oldest soccer competition in the world and open to something like 700 teams — gains its romance from victories by “minnows” over footballing powerhouses. This occurs a time or two almost every year in the early rounds. But in these days of vast financial disparities between clubs, it almost never happens in the Cup final. Indeed, from 1996 until this year, only Portsmouth had broken »
May 12, 2013 — John Hinderaker

Dr. Ben Carson to Headline Center of the American Experiment’s Annual Dinner

Featured imageThe Center of the American Experiment is a nationally respected conservative organization headquartered in Minneapolis. Scott and I have both served on its board in the past. The Center’s annual dinners have long been renowned for featuring speakers like Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bill Bennett, George H. W. Bush, Norman Schwartzkopf, Robert Bork, Rudy Giuliani, Charles Krauthammer and many more. This year the Center has scored a coup by lining »
May 13, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff

The Washington Post’s intellectually dishonest defense of Tom Perez

Featured imageThe Washington Post editorial board falls well short of its usual standards in this superficial and intellectually dishonest piece of partisanship attacking Republicans for opposing Tom Perez’s nomination for Secretary of Labor. The Post characterizes Republican opposition as driven purely by policy disagreements: Democrats highly regard Mr. Perez, a former secretary of labor in Maryland, for his aggressive action on voting rights, police abuse and fair lending cases. Republicans dislike »
May 13, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff

Rand Paul, fusionist

Featured imageEliana Johnson reports on Rand Paul’s visit to Iowa, which soon will be followed by visits to New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. As Eliana’s report makes clear, outreach to social conservatives was a main purpose of Paul’s trip to Iowa. The front page of today’s Washington Post also contains a story, albeit less insightful, about Paul’s outreach efforts. Paul exaggerates, but is on to something, when he says “politics »
May 13, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff

Hillary Clinton’s false choice

Featured imageVictor Davis Hanson makes a point that I forgot to include in my most recent post about Hillary Clinton’s “what difference does it make” rant. Clinton testified: With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it »
May 12, 2013 — Steven Hayward

The Weekly Winston: IRS Scandal Edition

Featured imageThe revelations of the IRS investigations of conservative groups, and the incredible explanations of why this should be regarded as an “innocent” mistake, summons to mind Churchill’s campaign speech of June 1945, attacking the socialist platform of the Labour Party in that hard fought campaign (which Churchill’s Tory party lost in a landslide).  Some of this description may not fit Obamaworld perfectly, but the third paragraph sounds like an accurate »
May 12, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff

Hillary Clinton’s return to Whitewater mode

Featured imageAt a Senate hearing in January, Hillary Clinton responded to questioning from Sen. Ron Johnson about the nature of the Benghazi attack with this rant: With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? Given »
May 12, 2013 — John Hinderaker

The Muslim War on Christianity

Featured imageThe most widespread oppression in the world today is the oppression of Christians by Muslims. And yet, for some reason, the world’s foremost human rights crisis is rarely noticed, let alone opposed. Raymond Ibrahim, author of a new book titled Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, has tirelessly tried to draw attention to the catastrophe that has befallen Christians living in predominantly Muslim countries in recent years. Ibrahim »